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Trump, Weinstein, and the enormously high cost of doing nothing | Will Bunch

President Trump’s unfitness for the Oval Office not only endangers the country, it risks a catastrophic war – but many in Washington are afraid to speak out for the same reasons people in Hollywood have stayed silent over Harvey Weinstein’s abuses.

Pssst … wanna hear another open secret – one that's more widely known and of even more consequence than Weinstein and his prey? Donald Trump is clearly not fit – temperamentally, intellectually, or, it seems increasingly clear, psychologically – to continue serving as president of the United States. Just like Weinstein, there are days when it feels like it's only the comedians who are willing, in a time of broken politics and broken journalism, to tell the nation that the emperor is wearing no clothes. Just like Weinstein, the Trump unfitness-for-office story has its own Courtney Love figure in retiring Tennessee GOP Sen. Bob Corker, who did go public to express his worries that the president's top aides, such as chief of staff John Kelly, are babysitting a commander-in-chief who could launch World War III.

But unfortunately, also like Weinstein, we're told by the media that there are many, many more Republicans on Capitol Hill and elsewhere who feel exactly the same way Corker feels – that Trump's unfitness for the Oval Office not only endangers the country, but risks a catastrophic war – but who are afraid to speak out for many of the same reasons people in Hollywood have stayed silent. Trump could retaliate against them. It could hurt their careers. It's a lot safer to keep your head down and say nothing. Right? Yet it's all but guaranteed there will come a day for Trump, exactly like the moment we're experiencing with Harvey Weinstein, with a flood of people suddenly going public with their behind-closed-doors Trump stories that things were even worse than anyone imagined.

Words – like those of Sen. Corker – are not enough. Something needs to be done … but what? The options are grim, or unlikely, or both – but let's look at them:

The 25th Amendment. The president's erratic behavior has led to a flurry of talk that Trump could somehow be removed under the 1967 constitutional amendment that lays out a procedure for determining when a president is mentally or physically unfit. The initial action would require the active involvement of the Cabinet – Trump loyalists, supposedly – and Vice President Pence, which is why I've long thought this has zero chance of happening, despite the irrational exuberance for the idea on Twitter.

Impeachment. Here, the bar is lower than the 25th Amendment. Just half of the House could vote to impeach Trump, which would force a trial in which two-thirds of the Senate would need to vote for a conviction to remove the 45th president from office. The grounds for Trump's impeachment and removal are hiding in plain sight, both under traditional definitions of high crimes and misdemeanors (Trump and the First Family enriching themselves off the presidency, obstruction of justice in the Trump-Russia probe) and more expansive ones (the neglect of Puerto Rico's crisis, for example).

Yet in spite of mounting proof of Trump's unfitness, the sheer spinelessness among Republicans in the House of Representatives – who are terrified of facing a Steve Bannon-style primary on the right, whose members won't even criticize a move that strips their own constituents of health insurance – makes it hard to imagine even 25 of them joining Democrats to vote for impeachment right now. Senators are a little bit more insulated from these pressures, yet even Senate critics such as Corker seem to limit their resistance to mere words. So there's …

The 2018 elections. For the majority of those vehemently opposed to Trump – Democrats and some independents – the only options have been a short-term resistance that's had some real successes, such as pressure on Congress that so far has thwarted legislative repeal of Obamacare, and a forward look toward electing more anti-Trump candidates in 2018. But recent Trump tantrums on the Affordable Care Act and Iran, and his war posture on North Korea have shown the dire limitations of that strategy.

The fourth option is the status quo, and this week was painful proof of that American open secret since Nov. 8, 2016 – that the status quo is simply untenable. Maybe we should call this option the Harvey Weinstein plan. Because increasingly, it feels that people with the power to do something won't have the courage to denounce Trump's predatory assaults on America's fundamental values until it's really much too late.